


His Large Calm Eyes for the Love of Me

by onstraysod



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Drippy romance (pun fully intended), Human/Merpeople Relationships, Lust at First Sight, M/M, Merpeople, Work In Progress, nautical folklore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 13:16:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18700354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/onstraysod/pseuds/onstraysod
Summary: “There is no love in them, Edward,” the Captain tells him... “Only empty vows and cold caresses.”But Edward dreams again of sea-green eyes and feels more alive sleeping than he does when he’s awake.





	His Large Calm Eyes for the Love of Me

**Author's Note:**

> Title taken from "The Mermaid" by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
> 
> Instead of writing a traditionally-structured narrative, I decided to write this as a series of short pieces. It will (hopefully) be updated on a regular basis.
> 
> Please note: There is every possibility that the rating will go up in later chapters.

He began dreaming of eyes the color of the sea in the wake of a storm. Like the blue-green foam churned to the top of the waves from the fathoms beneath, carrying with it the secrets of the deep. Soft and yet steely, glinting in the starlight breaking through the scudding clouds, it was a siren’s gaze, mesmerizing, the warm tide tugging him towards crystalline shallows, coral beds spread with sheets of white sand. Or the undercurrent pulling him down to a spar-strewn, silty grave.

The sea knew of Edward’s loneliness, and it mocked him.

Hadn’t the Captain warned him not to confide in the water, not to answer the cries of the gull and the tern with the confessions of his heart? All those long hours spent bobbing on the waves, waiting for his nets to fill, had lulled Edward into complacency, the murmur of the surf as it lapped the sides of the boat too much like a lover’s voice, soothing and cajoling. How many times had he sighed and spoken his wishes aloud, to be carried into the depths by the finned creatures that frolicked on the tide, repeated there to forgotten gods in sunken kelp-draped temples?

In the evenings, when the boat is tied to the wharf and the catch is hauled ashore, he finds the crippled Captain standing outside the whitewashed cottage they share, staring over the cove to the wild ocean beyond. He nods to the gray thunderclouds swelling in the northern sky and cradles the stump of his hand to his chest. The man has given more precious parts of himself to the sea than that: Edward knows this without needing to be told.

“They sing such storms into being,” he mutters. “Storms that buckle first-rates along their beams. What a harvest they make of it, all hands flailing and sinking. Sinking down into their cold embrace.” He clutches Edward’s sleeve and shakes his head, blue eyes haunted and hard as flint in his weather-beaten visage. “Believe me, Edward. There’s nothing out there to hold on to.”

Later the Captain will sit by the hearth for hours, pipe in his teeth and memories circling his brow like smoke. An old coat of Navy issue lies cradled in his arms, its gold buttons tarnished and its epaulets unraveling. It had fit a taller frame than the Captain’s, but of the man’s name and fate Edward can only surmise. He doesn’t ask and the Captain doesn’t tell. Once, as the older man dozed, whiskey bottle half-empty on the table at his side, Edward lifted one sleeve of the garment to his nose and smelled mildew and brine, the scent of the drowned.

He leaves the Captain to his mourning and walks to the shore, dropping his clothes in a pile on the sand. Submerging himself in a welcoming embrace, Edward chases the gleam of the moon along the crest of each wave, and lets the water caress him. It circles around his chest and slides its fingers between his thighs, teasing and arousing him, tugging him steadily further from the land, into a half-dream of salty kisses and weightlessness. Each ripple against his skin is a promise in the language of the deep, the lap of every current in his ears an invitation. _Close_ , it whispers, _I am close_ , and the sea licks every inch of Edward’s body until he burns with an unquenchable fire. Back on the sand, he stands naked in the sea-breeze until the blood in his veins slows its pulse and cools under the light of the stars.

“There is no love in them, Edward,” the Captain tells him when he returns to the cottage, dark hair wet and limp upon his brow. “Only empty vows and cold caresses.”

But Edward dreams again of sea-green eyes and feels more alive sleeping than he does when he’s awake.


End file.
